The Biblical Foundations of Catholic Salvation

(Part 4)

 

Paul Newcombe

 

 

THE CONTEXT OF OUR JUSTIFICATION IS “GOD’S FAMILY”

NOT THE “ROMAN COURTROOM”

 

Many (but not all) Protestant denominations teach that justification is a legal transaction.  We give God our sin and unrighteousness, in return God gives us salvation through the blood of Christ.  Thus, Protestants have traditionally believed that the context of justification is the Roman courtroom.  We as the guilty sinner walk into court.  God the Father is our judge.  We are intrinsically evil however our sin is cloaked by the righteousness of Christ.  To use Luther’s analogy, Christ’s righteousness covers us like snow that covers the dung pile.  God the Father, as our judge, does not see our sins — when He looks at us He sees only the righteousness of his Son Jesus.  Thus, He passes the verdict of: Not guilty. 

 

This particular view of justification as a legal standing with God — a formal acquittal from guilt — is expressed by a wide variety of Protestants today.  Whether they're Presbyterian, Methodists, Lutheran, Episcopalians, Fundamentalists or Evangelicals the general Protestant conception of the doctrine of justification is based on the Augsburg Confession of the Lutherans in 1530, the Second Helvetic in 1566, the Reformed Church's Westminster Confession in 1646, and many other statement as well.  The Westminster Theological Seminary faculty has adopted a statement on justification that clearly describes what is distinctively Protestant and non-Catholic:

 

“Justification is altogether a legal, declarative act on God's part as the supreme Judge.  We deny that justification is in any sense a moral transformation or inner renewal.  In justification God legally declares the sinner who in himself is still guilty and polluted to be righteous in Christ.  Justification involves only the legal imputation or legal account of the perfect righteousness of Christ to the sinner.  We deny that justification is by a grace given at conversion which enables sinners to do the law unto their justification.”

 

This view of justification as a strictly legal transaction continues to be declared across the Protestant spectrum.  From world-renown conservative Protestant theologians like J.I. Packer:

 

Justification is a judicial act of God pardoning sinners (wicked and ungodly persons, Rom. 4:5; 3:9-24), accepting them as just, and so putting permanently right their previously estranged relationship with Himself.  This justifying sentence is God’s gift of righteousness (Rom. 5:15-17), his bestowal of a status of acceptance for Jesus’ sake (2 Cor. 5:21).[1]

 

to famous Protestant tele-evangelists like Jimmy Swaggart:

 

“It [justification] is the action of a Judge declaring a prisoner innocent.  The accused says nothing and does nothing.  The Judge is the sole actor—he justifies the man, i.e., he declares him Righteous (Williams).  This Beautiful Work comes about as one expresses simple Faith in Christ and what He did at Calvary and the Resurrection.”[2]

 

to average Protestant pastors like Charles R. Biggs, pastor of Ketoctin Covenant Presbyterian Church in Purcellville, Virginia, explaining doctrine to his congregations from the Sunday pulpit:

 

“Justification, the cardinal principle of the Reformation, is the heart of the Reformed or Presbyterian faith as truly as it is of the evangelical or Lutheran doctrine.  …Justification is forensic (that is, it is "courtroom language").  We are declared, counted or reckoned to be righteous when God imputes the righteousness of Christ (an "alien righteousness") to our account.  In other words, the Judge of all the earth declares us "not guilty" …When we believe, God imputes Christ's righteousness to us “as if” it were our own.”[3] 

 

The Catholic Church teaches something quite different — that our justification has a juridical aspect where God acts as our judge, however, primarily God acts as our Father.  His Fatherly nature does not prompt God to establish legal contracts with His children; instead, He establishes covenants which are sacred family bonds.  Thus, in the Catholic perspective, justification does not occur primarily in a court room, but in a family room in a household of faith. 

 

In examining the context of salvation, it must be noted that Scripture does not use courtroom imagery to describe our initial justification.  According to Catholic theologian, Robert Sungenis:

 

“Paul does not appeal to the Roman court system when describing justification; rather, he appeals to the covenant fathers such as Abraham, Moses and David.  If the courtroom model were being portrayed, we would expect Scripture to create vivid scenes of a criminal standing before a judge, perhaps with an attorney present to defend his case.  We would expect, in reference to justification, to see terminology associated with a courtroom scene, e.g., court, judge, jury, verdict, books, defendant, witness, attorney, acquitted, etc.  Although Scripture employs scenes and descriptions of this nature, it does so only in reference to the Final Judgement.”[4]

  

While the Roman courtroom is not depicted in Scripture as the scene of our justification, the same cannot be said of the family environment.  Christ speaks of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) who returns to his father’s house in repentance after spending all his money on a sinful existence.  It must be noticed how Jesus chooses to depict the father in this story.  Upon seeing his son returning the father does not set up a court outside the family home.   The father does not set himself up as a judge to pass a legal sentence upon his son.  Instead, the father runs to his son and embraces him.  The father does not acquit him; rather, his father forgives him.  He takes his son into the family home and accepts him as a fully-fledged family member once again.  Is there judgment occurring here?  Yes.  However, the symbolic biblical depiction of this judgment is one where God, as Father, is gracious, merciful, and ready to forgive — and He seeks to restore a familial relationship that was severed with his son. 

 

Family restoration, as the primary context of our initial justification is built upon the Hebrew concept of the covenant which was viewed as nothing less than a sacred family bond established between God and His children.  Oftentimes modern Christians are prone to view the Old Testament covenants and even the new covenant as nothing more than a contract.  This is to grossly understate what God does when He institutes a covenant with His people.  A covenant is not a contract.  Contracts are reducible to a legal assertion between a master and a slave, or an employer and an employee.  In either case — family love does not exist between the contracting parties.  In contrast, the Hebrew perspective, and the fully developed Christian perspective, is one where the love that exists between God and man is family love.  Moreover, this familial relationship can only be expressed and truly made a reality when contracts are left behind and sacred family bonds are established — and this is what the covenants between God and His children are all about. 

 

A contractual view of the new covenant will inevitably lead one to embrace justification as a mere legal imputation; likewise, a familial view of the covenants of God will lead one to see that justification occurs in a household of faith and involves nothing less than adoption as Gods children.  The familial context of man’s interaction with God is highlighted by the Scriptures on a regular basis through a consistent depiction of the Father/son relationship between God and man:

 

He will call out to me, “YOU ARE MY FATHER, my God, the Rock my Savior”. (Psalm 89:26).

 

“But YOU ARE OUR FATHER, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name”. (Isaiah 63:16).

 

Yet, O Lord, YOU ARE OUR FATHER.  We are the clay, you are the potter”. (Isaiah 64:8).

 

“Have you not just called to me: ‘MY FATHER, my friend from my youth, will you always be angry?  Will your wrath continue forever?... I myself said, ‘HOW GLADLY WOULD I TREAT YOU LIKE SONS and give you a desirable land the most beautiful inheritance of any nation.’  I THOUGHT YOU WOULD CALL ME ‘FATHER’ and not turn away from following me”. (Jeremiah 3:4, 19).

 

“…in the desert.  There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, AS A FATHER CARRIES HIS SON, all the way you went…” (Deuteronomy 1:31).

 

These passages reveal that God desires the most intimate familial relationship with His children.  This lends strength to the Catholic perspective that God has established an economy of salvation based firmly upon sacred family bonds.  The most well-intentioned contracts leading us to a courtroom scenario will never be sufficient.  Only a family covenant which truly brings us into a familial relationship with God will agree with the biblical depictions of God’s kinship bond with His children.         

 

                

JUSTIFICATION INCLUDES DIVINE SONSHIP

 

Many (but not all) Protestant denominations view justification as a divine procedure where we are legally declared to be children of God but are not actually recreated as His children.  The limitations of the Protestant courtroom salvation become evident here.  From the Catholic perspective, because justification is a familial process our justification consequently includes much more than simply being an acquitted defendant—it includes sonship, that is, becoming sons and daughters of God.  We are not just legally declared to be sons of God, but we are made sons of God — actually transformed to be children of God.  We are a completely “new creation”.  Paul carries this concept of our re-creation through two of his letters:

 

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a NEW CREATION; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.  It is all God’s work. (2 Corinthians 5:17-18).

 

Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a NEW CREATION. (Galatians 6:15).

 

Moreover, this “new creation” is further explained by Paul as our transformation where we receive the Spirit and are truly made “children of God”.  These passages on sonship are found in Romans and Galatians within the context surrounding Paul’s discussion of justification:

 

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but YOU HAVE RECEIVED THE SPIRIT OF SONSHIP.  When we cry, “Abba!  Father!”  It is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that WE ARE CHILDREN OF GOD… (Romans 8:15-16)

 

…that we might receive ADOPTION AS SONS.  And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba!  Father!”  So through God YOU ARE NO LONGER A SLAVE BUT A SON, and if a son then an heir. (Galatians 4:5-7).

 

John likewise omits any reference to our sonship as a mere legal declaration.  Instead, he differentiates the distinction between being merely called God’s children and actually being God’s children:

 

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and SO WE ARE. …Beloved, we are God’s children now (1 John 3:1-2).

 

Catholic theologian, Scott Hahn describes the matter in the following way:

 

The results of our study show how the covenant, which is the basis for God’s law and judgments, is ultimately a familial reality.  This means that God’s “forensic” decree of justification must be understood primarily as the covenantal/familial act of the divine Father.  The “right standing” which this “forensic” decree effects is nothing less than divine sonship, just as Paul argues in Gal. 3:6-4:7, and Trent defines it (Session VI. ch. 4).  The classical Protestant doctrine of justification wrongly defines it as an exclusively judicial act (i.e., mere legal imputation of Christ’s righteousness).  As a consequence, its primary meaning (divine sonship) is overlooked or suppressed.  Thus, the forensic character of justification ultimately rests on a covenantal-familial basis — denial of which leads to a nominalistic view that opposes the forensic to the familial (i.e imputation verses adoption).[5]

 

The 1994 Catholic Catechism also explains adoption as being the heart of the Christian gospel:

 

“Grace is a participation in the life of God.  It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life…As an “adopted son” he can henceforth call God ‘Father,’ in union with the only Son.[6]

 

Because justification is a family event which occurs in a household of faith, mere legal declarations become inappropriate.  Why?  For the reason that if man is only legally declared to be children of God the very nature and action of God as our Father is reduced to that of a courtroom judge — and this contradicts the constant scriptural emphasis that God’s dealings with us are Fatherly by nature.  Justification is not best described as exclusively a situation where a judge legally declares us to be his children.  The Catholic perspective takes this basic truth to its undiluted finality where the judge legally declares us to be His children; he provides us with a certificate of adoption; and the instant we receive that adoption the grace of God recreates us.  Our very DNA, as it were, now matches that of the judge — we truly are his children.  We are new creations.  The judge then takes us to his family home where our justification receives its proper context.  We are forbidden from calling him “your honor”, we must now call him “father” for that is who he truly is.  Hence in justification we participate in, and partake of, the divine life of our heavenly Father.  Peter describes this partaking of God’s divine life in the following way:

 

Through him God has bestowed on us high and treasured promises; WE ARE MADE PARTAKERS OF THE DIVINE NATURE, with the world’s corruption, the world’s passions, left behind. (2 Peter 1:3-4). 

 

The Catholic Catechism also reflects this passage in describing the effects of justifying grace:

 

Grace is favour, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.  Grace is a participation in the life of God.  It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life.[7]

 

By this, neither St. Peter, nor the Catholic Church teach that man becomes divine, equal with God, or give credence to any notion that would blur the infinite distinction between the Creator and His creations.  We do not become Gods.  However, in justification, we do become partakers of the divine nature.  God draws us into His own being—the very life of the divine Trinity.  The mechanics of this divine sonship remain a great mystery, yet we believe that in justification God consumes us, recreates us, enables us to partake of His divine nature and participate in His very life—and yet we remain creatures.  This doctrine of adoption is the pinnacle of the Catholic gospel which elevates the effects of justification to heights completely beyond the grasp of gospels which restrict our salvation to the legalities of a courtroom proceeding.  It is the full rendering of the good news which constitutes a Christian message that cannot be surpassed by any other concept of salvation.  Divine sonship is the glowing heart of the New Testament and the central hope of historic Christianity.

 

 

Footnotes:

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[1] J.I. Packer. Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs, in Monergism.com,  http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/packer/justification.html, access date 19 February 2005.

 

[2] Swaggart, Jimmy. Justification, in Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, http://www.jsm.org/html/se1.htm, access date 18 February 2005.

 

[3] Biggs, Charles. In Monergism.com, http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/topic/justification.html, access date 18 February 2005.

 

[4] Sungenis, Robert. How Can I Get To Heaven, Santa Barbara, Queenship Publishing, 1998, p.230.

 

[5] Hahn, Scott. Kinship by Covenant: A Biblical Theological Study of Covenant Types in the Old and New Testaments, Ph.D. Dissertation, 1995 for Marquette University, p.664

 

[6] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, Sections 1996 & 1997.

 

[7] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, Section 1996.